The Trump administration is expected to soon cancel any remaining federal contracts with Harvard University, the latest escalation in the government’s ongoing war against the storied university.
The U.S. General Services Administration will send a letter to federal agencies on Tuesday directing the termination of Harvard’s remaining $100 million in federal contracts, the New York Times first reported. A draft letter directs agencies to respond by June 6 with a list of contract cancellations and to “find alternative vendors” for future services.
Contracts with nine federal agencies would be impacted.
National Review has reached out to the GSA and Harvard University for comment.
Affected contracts would include a nearly $50,000 National Institutes of Health contract to investigate the effects of coffee drinking and a $25,800 Department of Homeland Security contract for senior executive training.
It’s the latest update in a bitter battle between the administration and the Ivy League university; the administration had already frozen $3.2 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard and attempted to revoke Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students.
However, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to deny Harvard’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program — a federal program which enables schools and universities in the U.S. to host visa-carrying international students.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem first demanded that Harvard provide information about the “criminality and misconduct” of foreign students on its campus on April 16. She warned at the time that refusal to comply would result in the termination of the university’s visa program.
The Department of Homeland Security informed Harvard last week that it would no longer be allowed to enroll foreign students due to “pro-terrorist conduct” on campus. However, the university responded by filing a lawsuit accusing the administration of pursuing a “campaign of retribution.”
Judge Allison D. Burroughs set a hearing on Thursday to decide whether the temporary restraining order should be extended.
International students make up 27 percent of Harvard’s total enrollment. If the Trump administration’s ban stands, Harvard President Alan Garber predicted the impacts would be devastating for the university.
Harvard also filed a lawsuit last month that looks to restore more than $3 billion in already-terminated federal funding.
The administration has implemented increasingly escalatory tactics against the university since it rejected the administration’s demands to ban students “hostile to the American values,” to perform an audit of the political ideology of students and faculty to ensure “viewpoint diversity” and to offer quarterly status updates to the administration, among other things.